Mrs. Payton's chin quivered. "You ought not to speak so about your brother. Remember, even if he isn't—bright, he's a man, and the head of the family." Fred looked at her with genuine curiosity; how could she say a thing like that! "Besides," Mrs. Payton added, "Doctor Davis always said his intellect was there; it isn't his fault that it is veiled."
"No, it isn't his fault," Frederica said, significantly. She took her book into the bare room, which could not be carpeted or curtained because of the poor, destroying hands that sometimes had to be tied for fear they would claw and snatch, even at Miss Carter's heavy chair or at the table, screwed down to the floor. There was a drop-light over the table, and Frederica turned it on and opened her book; but she did not read much; the snoring breath from the bed disturbed her. Instead, she fell to thinking about Howard Maitland—sometimes she was impatient with herself for thinking of him so constantly! But the warm satisfaction that took possession of her whenever he came into her mind, was an irresistible temptation. She did not often speculate upon his feeling for her. "He's fond of me," she told herself, once in a while, contentedly. That some time he would tell her he was fond of her was a matter of course. Just now, she fell to calculating how soon her last letter would reach him. One from him, acknowledging the receipt of some suffrage literature, had come that morning. "I don't believe one woman in fifty has your brains," he had written. Fred smiled; when he came home in November she would show him those "brains"! Apparently, Mr. Arthur Weston did not take much stock in them—"He prefers the domestic virtues," she thought, with a flash of amusement. "I wonder if I'm domestic enough to suit him, to-night? I suppose he would think it was better to sit with an idiot than to try to move the world along!" But the next minute she was contrite. "He can't help being old. I suppose this is the sort of thing his generation calls 'Duty'!"
She might have reflected further upon the foolishness of the past generation, if just then Mrs. Payton had not come stealthily along the hall. She stood in the doorway, raising a cautioning finger.
"Oh, you can't wake him," Frederica said, in her natural voice. But Mrs. Payton spoke in a whisper.
"Freddy, isn't your cottage damp—so near the lake? There's no surer way to take cold than—"
"Not a bit damp!"
"Does Flora make good coffee for you?"
"Bully."
"I hope she's more contented. Miss Carter says the whole trouble with Flora is she wants to get married, but she makes herself so cheap the men won't look at her."